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A local business management consultant and seminar leader told a University of Wisconsin crowd Tuesday that testing on monkeys in UW research centers is immoral and unethical in all regards.
Speaker Rick Marolt promoted attempts to abolish experimentation on primates, addressing why these have not been more prevalent at UW.
Marolt added he believes there would be no immediate negative ramifications to termination of this research.
“If the UW-Madison stopped experimenting on monkeys tomorrow, I guarantee you nothing bad would happen,” Marolt said. “It is not necessary in any absolute sense.”
Marolt described all of the characteristics of various monkey species that make them similar to humans, including monkeys’ ability to learn from mistakes, experience empathy, lie, think hypothetically and show love.
Upon listing these human-like correlations, Marolt was critical of the current rational for experimentation on monkeys, underscoring the ridiculousness of the notion that people will do painful, invasive experiments on a species similar to their own.
He said UW lacks logical and moral clarity because it thinks the best way to learn about one species is by studying another species.
Marolt said he sees experimenting on monkeys as morally unethical as experimenting on people. He argued any difference that could be identified between the two species that might justify experimenting on monkeys could also be used to justify experimenting on some people.
He added as an example, if one justified experimenting on monkeys because they are less intelligent than people, this logic would also justify experimenting on humans in a vegetative state or with severe mental handicaps.
Marolt also described the uselessness of caloric restriction research at UW, saying even the research center’s press release acknowledged conclusive evidence of effects on diet may never be known, thus the research center is keeping monkeys captive for nothing.
Richard Weindruch, professor in the School of Medicine and Public Health who does caloric restriction research, promoted the high level of safety and health regulations applied to the center’s primate testing. He added experimentation and living conditions of the monkeys must meet federal regulations.
“The animals in my study are very closely monitored for health status,” Weindruch said.
Weindruch added his research deals with making animals, and possibly people, healthier and able to live longer. Therefore, there is very little invasive or harmful experimentation done to animals, since he is focused on how long they live and remain healthy.
UW physiology professor Joseph Kemnitz, an expert on biomedical research using nonhuman primates, said in an e-mail to The Badger Herald he was confident in the morality of primate research at UW, saying humane research on primates is ethical.
Kemnitz noted the animals used for research testing are able to interact with their neighbors and kept in rooms set at comfortable temperatures corresponding to that of their natural habitats.
Also, he said the test subjects are provided with fresh, clean water and nutritious diets along with prompt medical care as needed, and they have good relationships with their caregivers.
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The monkeys should replaced by the humans who attempt to abolish experimentation on primates.
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He contradicts himself. He said “UW lacks logical and moral clarity because it thinks the best way to learn about one species is by studying another species,” yet also describes how similar monkeys and humans are. Uh, DURR which one is it?
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I think some funding needs to be put toward researching how many people have died or have been severely injured from the �side effects� of pharmaceutical drugs and compare that to how many have been saved. —-and funding to study the people who live a long time without taking pharmaceutical drugs � we could learn a lot from their lifestyles. Studies have been done thanks the help of the oversight of the FDA; a representative from the FDA in a 2004 speech at the Mayo Alliance for Clinical Trials Conference said the amount of drugs that make it to late 3rd phase trials is 50% and it costs ~$800 million to bring one drug to the market. His point was that things need to be improved. I hope they do. I look at the 50% stat pessimistically: 50% of millions of dollars and animal lives wasted all done under the argument for �advancing humankind�. So blinded by animal research academia touting biomedical research as their own (despite the fact that there is human-derived stem cell and in-vitro testing going on), it seems some of the people who commented above are unwilling to look far enough past their own bias and animal-testing box to see that there needs to be improvement in the animal testing system. Otherwise, no one will be able to afford any drug that is developed. Part of the Research and Development process for pharma IS computer-based biomedical testing before they test the drugs in animals, then they are tested in humans. Wouldn�t microdosing in humans and extrapolating onto the whole human body system be a good enough way to predict drug reactions in humans? We would streamline the drug development process and save money. I don�t think any other business would accept 50% as an acceptable rate of developing successful products. I mean all these animal models are that � MODELS � that may not predict what will happen in the human because they are a different species (do you remember the vioxx heart attacks? I am sure those family members are singing a different tune about pharma drugs). I am confident that human-derived models could be developed and approved at a faster rate if it weren�t for researchers out there who are so ready to endorse and defend any form of animal testing without applying their otherwise objective scientific approach they abide by. A student commented at the talk ‘the monkeys are in captivity and know no other life’. consider that there are breeding islands and that monkeys are wild caught from Indonesia to help maintain genetic diversity in the industry. Society’s blind acceptance of primates in research has led to 10,000 monkeys per year being wild trapped in cambodia. watch http://www.buav.org/investigations/tornfromthewild and ask yourself if it is really worth it. (and yes, that link is from an ‘animal rights’ website, but try to watch the actual footage being taken and think openly for 2 minutes)